October has historically been a scary month for the stock market, with the crashes of 1929 and 1987 coming during the same month as Halloween. Yet investors weren't too frightened to send stocks higher on Thursday, carrying forward momentum from a strong third quarter of 2020. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI 0.69%), S&P 500 (^GSPC 1.20%) and Nasdaq Composite all gained ground, albeit to varying degrees.
Today's stock market
|
Index |
Percentage Change |
Point Change |
|---|---|---|
|
Dow |
+0.13% |
+35 |
|
S&P 500 |
+0.53% |
+18 |
|
Nasdaq Composite |
+1.42% |
+159 |
Data source: Yahoo! Finance.
News carried some individual stocks far higher. Rocket (RKT 5.51%) was the beneficiary of an announcement of a strategic partnership, while The Container Store Group (TCS 2.40%) got a lot of mileage out of a prominent product placement.
Image source: Getty Images.
Housing lifts Rocket
Shares of Rocket were up 14% on Thursday. The company that runs the Rocket Mortgage online home lending service made a smart move in teaming up with a giant in the housing industry.
Rocket made a deal with the Realtor.com real estate listing site to increase the mortgage company's visibility among would-be homebuyers. Under the terms of the deal, Realtor.com will put ads on its website that will direct those interested in getting pre-approved for mortgage financing directly to Rocket Mortgage's online application platform.
Even with the economy going through recessionary conditions, the housing market remains extremely strong. One good reason is the extremely low interest rate environment, which makes mortgage financing a lot cheaper to get. Low rates mean lower monthly payments, which in turn can support higher real estate prices as well.
Rocket shares have been turbulent since its IPO earlier this summer. Shareholders hope that the Realtor.com partnership will drive even more traffic to the mortgage lending specialist and help bolster its growth further.
All press is good press for The Container Store
Elsewhere, The Container Store Group stock vaulted 25% higher on Thursday. The organizational goods retailer might be the last company you'd think would be linked to streaming video, but that's what's behind a report on Container Store today.
The New York Post wrote a feature article discussing the success of a show called Get Organized with The Home Edit, which began running on Netflix (NFLX 4.17%) last month. The article noted that Container Store has worked with the creators of the show to come out with the Home Edit Exclusive Collection, a product line sold exclusively at the organizational retailer.
As Fool contributor Rich Duprey noted earlier today, the news doesn't seem to justify a 25% stock price rise. It's also possible that part of the gain came from the success of industry peer Bed Bath & Beyond (BBBY), which announced much stronger earnings results than expected.
Even with the gains, though, Container Store remains 80% below its high from the early to mid-2010s. It'll take a lot of promotional show deals for the organizational goods specialist to return to its former glory.
